


Chanson d'Automne

by Cunien



Series: French Resistance Musketeers [1]
Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1940s, French Resistance, Gen, World War II
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-20
Updated: 2014-07-22
Packaged: 2018-02-09 17:41:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1991919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cunien/pseuds/Cunien
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Early summer, 1944. Aramis is an idealistic long-haired bohemian artist, Porthos grew up on the streets of Paris before the Nazi occupation forced him to flee, d’Artagnan the orphaned farm boy who somehow ended up in Northern France with the resistance cell they call The Musketeers, and Athos is missing, presumed interrogated. But when the others finally get him out he’s going to be so pissed about what they’ve done to his car.</p><p>They've got enough explosives to put a serious dent in the German war machine, and any day now they’re expecting orders from Treville and the Free French government in exile: the allied invasion of Europe is about to begin...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Bocage

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title 'Bocage' - the Normandy hedgerows that were usually thick mounds of earth with trees and bushes growing on top, often reaching over and creating a tunnel-like effect. The fighting in Normandy after D-Day is often referred to as "The Battle of the Bocage" because of the difficulty for men and tanks to fight in this landscape.
> 
> Thanks to [Donna_Immaculata](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Donna_Immaculata/pseuds/Donna_Immaculata) for help with German translations!

Porthos knows, of course, that it’s only week-old milk and some of Serge’s leftover soup - he watched Aramis mix it up after all - but that was before it was left out in the sun for three days, and the resulting smell is enough to make the bile burn and catch at the back of his throat. The inside of Athos’ old Peugeot is sweltering in the heat of an unseasonably warm spring day, and the disgusting mixture sitting in the open-topped thermos flask propped against the gearstick between them is only adding to the general sticky, unpleasant miasma.

“Jesus,” Porthos says, screwing up his nose and bringing a hand to his mouth, “Why-”

“You’ll see,” Aramis says, concentrating on the road. The frequent traffic from heavy military vehicles has left the tarmac in this part of France pocked and damaged. Porthos huffs a sigh and leans towards the tiny sliver of open window that Aramis has allowed.

“Athos will kill you when he gets back and finds his car stinking to high heaven,” Porthos says, looking out the window. He can feel Aramis stiffen next to him. When not, if. _When._

“I think he’ll agree it’s for a good cause,” Aramis says.

Porthos thinks of the little modifications they've made to the Peugeot since it fell into their hands, and is reminded again of the explosives in the hollowed out panel under the left back seat, the ones they need to get from the drop-zone near Bayeux to their stockpile outside of Carentan. He rolls his shoulders, feeling the heavy press of them at the edge of his mind. Today would not be a good day to be stopped and searched.

They take a left turn and head towards Monfreville, the typical Normandy hedgerows overgrown and thick with weeds and wildflowers, the shiver of beech leaves neon green and reaching high above the road.

“Aramis,” Porthos says after a while, “Checkpoint ahead.”

He sees the other man’s hand tighten slightly on the steering wheel, but he gives no answer.

“Aramis,” Porthos repeats, increasingly worried, “Aramis, there’s a _checkpoint_ , we need to-”

Without taking his eyes off the road or lessening the easy speed of the car, Aramis reaches for the Thermos between them, stretches out an arm into the passenger seat to his right, and tips the contents down Porthos’ shirt.

They sit in silence as the checkpoint grows nearer.

“Aramis,” Porthos says, perfectly calm, “Why did you just do that?”

“Don’t talk. Follow my lead.”

Aramis pulls the car up to the checkpoint with unhurried ease, the soldier manning it flagging them down with disinterest. “Papiers,” he demands as soon as Aramis cranks open the window.

“Here,” Aramis says, handing over his faked paper with an easy smile.

“And you-” the soldier says, leaning down to look into the car and catching sight of Porthos in the passenger seat. “Jesus,” he says, covering his mouth and looking very much as though he’s fighting back the urge to retch.

“My friend,” Aramis says, reaching over and taking the papers from Porthos’ jacket, “Is...er...well, you can see…” He makes sure to surreptitiously cover the identity paper in as much of the mess on Porthos’ front as possible as he’s doing so. Porthos catches a glimpse of his own unsmiling face in the photo tacked to the ID card, peering back at him through the slick mess as Aramis hands it gingerly out the window, dripping curdled milk and half-disintegrated chunks of carrot. 

“I’m taking him to the doctor, in Isigny-sur-Mer. He’s not well, and possibly very contagious,” Aramis flicks a quick glance at Porthos, sitting stunned and open-mouthed next to him, 

“And...simple,” he adds.

The soldier flinches back from the sodden paper proffered to him, and throws Aramis’ copy back through the open window with only a perfunctory glance. “Go,” he says, covering his mouth and motioning for them to move on, “Jesus.”

They’re two minutes down the road before Porthos breaks the silence. “Why do you never fill me in on your plans ahead of time?”

“It’s so much more authentic this way.”

“Pull over so I can wipe this shit off or I’m going to vomit all over you, how’s that for _authentic,_?” Porthos growls, sticking his head out the window in a blast of fresh air.

*

"They're moving him," d'Artagnan says, as soon as he’s set foot through the door. Aramis makes sure it’s locked after him, fixes the shutters, checking carefully that they’re alone while d’Artagnan jitters from one end of the room to the other, taking off his cap and running his hands through hair that’s grown shaggy and long of late.

"You know for sure?" Porthos asks. He takes the packet of cigarettes from his jacket and throws it over to the younger man, who pulls one out and lights it with trembling fingers.

"Yes. My contact is good. The information is good."

"You know," Aramis says, leaning against the table with a smirk that doesn't go all the way to hiding the sharpness of his tone, "Just because you're fucking her doesn't mean the information is good."

For a moment Porthos thinks the younger man might hit Aramis, which would be well deserved and, incidentally, also amusing, but d'Artagnan only rolls his shoulders and glares. "The information is good."

When they’d found out that Athos was being held near Caen it had shattered Aramis: four months and Athos had been so close, still in Normandy. Of course, he might as well have been in fucking Berlin for all they could do for him, since he’d dropped off the map as utterly as those kind of prisoners so often did. _Nacht und Nebel_ , that’s what they called the order: Night and Fog. Political prisoners, spies and resistance fighters, disappeared without a trace. 

No paper trail, no graves. Nothing left behind.

Or at least, until d’Artagnan’s contact - a pretty little redhead of a shopkeeper’s wife who you’d swear wouldn’t say boo to a goose up until the moment you felt the barrel of her revolver at the nape of your neck - had come to him with some information: she’d heard, in passing from a friend of a friend of a friend, that someone the Nazis were calling _the Comte_ was being held at Château d’Évrecy. 

It had all become crushingly real then. Athos hadn’t simply been spirited away on orders from London, from the Government-in-Exile, from Treville. He wouldn’t turn up one day, an insufferably little quirk to his lips, swigging from an ever-present wine bottle and toasting the downfall of Hitler, the traitorous Cardinal and his Vichy government cronies as one.

Four months and they’d been doing God knows what to him in that prison, less than fifty miles away. 

Château d’Évrecy. _Jesus Christ_ , Porthos thinks, _I wouldn’t wish that place on the Führer himself_. Everyone knew the château’s walls were as impenetrable as the stories that filtered out every now and then from the place, dark little whispers through the cracks and gratings: the cruelty of the guards, the cold indifference of the interrogators, the guillotine that stood in the courtyard. A fucking guillotine, for Christ’s sake

“Why are they moving him?” Porthos asks, “Where to?”

D’Artagnan swallows. “A camp, somewhere in Austria.” 

“Fuck. _Fuck._ ”

“They must have decided he’s of no more use,” Aramis says after a while, trying to keep his voice steady. It sounds thin and strained to Porthos’ ear. “They don’t interrogate at camps.”

They sit in silence for a moment, Aramis worrying his lip and Porthos watching d’Artagnan’s pacing.

“We don’t know the stories about those camps are true,” Porthos says, but it tastes like a lie on his tongue. What he wants to say is: _they can’t possibly be true._ Because it would be too awful.

It’s true there’s been nothing to prove the rumours, nothing official at least, but no one comes back to tell one way or another. The facts as they see them are that people are being loaded like cattle on to trains all over Europe: Jews and gypsies and homosexuals, doctors and writers and politicians, anyone who fights back or fits less than perfectly into the shining new Aryan world. But Porthos knows that, in the event that he could bring himself to pray these days, he would beg God that the rumours were just that. He knows Aramis does, nightly, hears him whispering over his rosary with such fervour it strikes at something in Porthos’ heart like a deft knife that eases between his ribs, until he has to go outside and smoke, or pace, or punch something. 

D’Artagnan stops his anxious pacing and comes to rest in a chair by the fire, but his knee still jiggles up and down with nervous energy. “What do you think he told them?” the boy asks after a while, and stiffens when the others narrow their eyes at him. 

“You don’t know Athos, boy,” Porthos says with a growl, “So we’ll let that one go. But if you did you’d know he hasn’t told them anything because he’s stubborn as a fucking mule.”

“The very definition of stoic,” Aramis adds. “I once saw him take a bullet from his shoulder without even a sound. Just sat there frowning, hands covered in blood, picking at it - not a sound.”

“I remember that,” Porthos grins darkly. It feels like a lifetime ago. “Autumn ‘41, right? Some trigger-happy little SS shit, came out of nowhere when we were waiting for that Lysander to land with those radio parts."

“And we hid in a storm drain for two days.”

“He won’t have told them anything, or we’d all be dead already,” Porthos says, “But he’s been there months, he’s either been feeding ‘em false information or they’ve been...persistent. Maybe both.”

“Does your contact have any more information about him, about what kind of...condition he might be in?” Aramis asks.

D’Artagnan shakes his head, paling visibly. “No, only that they’re moving him, saturday night.”

“Aramis,” the younger man says, after a moment, “This will be our only chance to get him, won’t it?” 

Aramis flicks a glance at Porthos, heavy with four months of fear and desperation, picking at trails and rumours like carrion crows whilst Athos remained resolutely _gone_.

"Yes."

"Well then. If Athos is half the man you say he is, we better make it count."

* 

"You’re sure about this?" Aramis asks, for the third time that night.

Porthos nods grimly, peering into the Peugeot's open grill, its innards just visible in the light of dusk. They'd probably be shot on sight if they were caught out on the roads at night with a torch, but the work isn't necessarily a precise art, and doesn’t require much light. 

It had been d’Artagnan’s plan, and it was a good one. They’d sat around for an hour throwing out ideas and shooting them down just as quickly before d’Artagnan stood and went to the door, asked for some time alone, and reappeared the next morning with dark smudges under his eyes and a plan to get Athos back. 

It was risky as hell of course, but what about life these days wasn’t? They’ve been on the knife’s edge for four years and Porthos is beginning to frighten himself with the itchy reckless feeling that hardly leaves him anymore. All he knows is that doing something is better than nothing at all.

With his gambler’s logic, Porthos weighs the chances of them all surviving this one as about thirty percent. He thinks about Athos, gone for months and enduring God knows what. He thinks about growing up in Paris, doing what needed to be done, struggling to survive. It was shitty but he was _free_ , and that’s something that couldn’t be said of anyone here since the Germans flooded over the border, and France fell.

The cooling evening air feels heavy with something like waiting, and Porthos rolls his shoulders and gets back to the task at hand. He swats at a mosquito buzzing somewhere near his ear, and curses the countryside and everything in it, promising himself that when men like him can walk the streets of their own cities without fascist aryans from some shitty German backwater causing trouble for them, he’ll go back to Paris and never leave.

The car hisses a sad exhalation of air as he puts his weight on the crowbar wedged in the machinery, wiggles something loose with a clang. 

“Sorry, Roger,” he mumbles, trying not to think about how accusatory the noises the car exudes in its death throes seem.

"Athos is going to kill you. He probably loves that car more than he does us."

Porthos smiles grimly, “Yeah well we all have to make sacrifices.”

Aramis’ face falls, Porthos can just make it out in the dimming light, before he turns back to the open grille with a sigh, and hangs his head. 

“Well, that was a fucking stupid thing to say. Sorry, Aramis,” Porthos says, quietly. He feels the other man’s hand heavy on his shoulder for a moment, tries to draw the strength up from it. 

“He’s going to be okay,” Aramis says, and his voice is steady. “It’s all going to be okay.”

A shadow shifting behind them is the only warning that d’Artagnan has arrived - though not from this part of France the boy has taken it upon himself to learn the lanes, ditches and pathways of Normandy, and has the uncanny ability of moving through the brush without making a sound. Farm boys who didn’t grow up on the streets of Paris, Porthos supposes, are better at this sort of thing.

A paler figure steps out from behind d’Artagnan and nods in greeting.

“This is Ninon,” the boy says, waving at the others in introduction. “Aramis, Porthos.”

“Good to meet you. Ready to go?” the woman asks.

Porthos blinks. “Well, you’re bloody direct, aren’t you?”

The woman smiles tightly, but it doesn’t go all the way to her eyes. “No point in mincing words. Don’t you know there’s a war on?”

“No offence,” Porthos replies, “But we don’t know you. You could be anyone.”

Ninon studies him for a moment, never lowering the slight upwards tilt of her chin. Rich, Porthos thinks, or once was: her clothes are expensive but have seen better days, her demeanour one of a woman who is used to the authority that comes with wealth and standing.

“I’m someone,” she says after a moment, and there’s an odd, defiant lilt to her voice. “Someone who has a reason to help you. But, I can go if you’d prefer…”

“No,” Aramis says with a start, “No. If d’Artagnan trusts you then we do too, right Porthos?”

It had taken some persuading to get Porthos to agree on this plan. It’s not that she’s a woman - God knows Porthos has seen enough capable, brave and deadly women in his lifetime - but he doesn’t know this Ninon, and the war has made him suspicious of unfamiliar faces. It’s taken almost four months and a few minor brushes with death for him to believe that d’Artagnan is who he says he is, after all.

But they need her if they’re going to get Athos back.

Porthos makes a vague noise in reply, and nods, hoping that this will suffice.

*

D’Artagnan had been right: there was only one truck and no support vehicles. Porthos peers through the bushes to the right of the road to watch the canvas sides of the truck as it rolls to a stop, and feels his heart lurch up into his throat. Athos is in there. 

Fuck, Athos better be in there.

Porthos longs for the steady weight of Aramis at his side, the press of him there in the last drawn in breath before battle, but the other man is somewhere in the deep shadows on the opposite side of the road. He flicks a glance at d’Artagnan next to him, peering through the dense green bushes towards the road, and feels a little more sure of himself at least. D’Artagnan is young but he’s sharp as a knife, and, Porthos supposes, his life has been in the boy’s hands enough times for him to trust him almost as much as he would Aramis, or Athos.

One of the soldiers leaps down from the cab of the truck and advances on the pale figure of Ninon beside the broken down Peugeot with his gun levelled, and Porthos focuses back on the road.

“Was ist da los?” The soldier moves a little closer and sees Ninon properly, blinking in the harsh light of headlamps. His voice softens. “You’re out past curfew, mademoiselle,” he lowers the gun and steps closer, “You could get into a lot of trouble.”

“I’m sorry,” Ninon says. There’s a smudge of oil on her nose and her slim hands are painted black with it. It’s only then that Porthos appreciates how beautiful she is, slim and ghostly pale in the darkness. “I’m so sorry, I don’t know...maybe it’s out of petrol? The shortages, you know…”

She flutters a shy smile at the soldier, but Porthos can see the little calculating light in the flash of headlamps in her eyes, for a moment. “Can you help me? Please?”

“You’re blocking the road, so I suppose I’ll have to,” laughs the soldier. 

“Was ist da los, Hertz? Schaffen Sie sie von der Straße, verdammt!” The driver sticks his head out of the cab window and shouts, “Wir müssen weiter!”

“Okay, okay,” the soldier replies, waving at the truck and turning back to Ninon, “I used to fix things back home, let me have a look at your engine.”

“That’s very kind, thank you,” Ninon says, following the soldier to the front of the car, “I think something might have come loose here, at the front,” she says leaning down and pointing at the open grille. From where Porthos is he can see the German squat down to peer inside the grille, but out of sight of his fellow soldiers he knows there’s no one else to witness Ninon squatting down beside him, the slick flash of her knife at his throat. Porthos feels d’Artagnan tense beside him.

It takes five seconds and not a single sound for the soldier to die: he bucks once in Ninon’s arms, before slumping face first into the open grille of the Peugeot. Ninon stays down, carrying on a one-sided conversation. “See, here,” she says, voice level. She glances at where Aramis is hiding in the bushes and nods once. “I think this bit has broken.”

There’s a shot then, a tinkle of glass as the truck windshield is punched with a neat hole before the whole thing shatters inwards, red with blood and fragments of bone. Without thinking Porthos has raised the barrel of his rifle - an old Pattern 14 left behind by the retreating English four years ago - and fired once through the shattered window into the cab of the truck. A lifeless arm flops out the open door, the finger curled towards where Porthos crouches in the darkness.

They know of course that there are more soldiers in the back of the truck with, but it’s still a surprise when two come tumbling out of the canvas flap at the rear. Porthos wonders what the hell they think they’ll achieve, since they’re under fire and have no cover, but, he supposes, they’re probably very young. D’Artagnan shoots one before he’s had the chance to stand up, Porthos brings the other down with a couple of shots.

A moment later two figures drop from the back of the truck, and Porthos’ finger has already contracted once around the trigger before he realises, firstly, that one of the men is dressed in civilian clothing, and secondly that his shot has fallen blessedly short, and pings the road in a shower of splintered tarmac.

In the darkening light he can’t tell if it’s Athos, and since the man is hunched in on himself all he can see is that he’s certainly not in uniform. The soldier is quickly joined by two more, who cover the hedges to the left and right of the road as one of them points his Luger at the civilian. 

The soldier grabs a handful of the man’s hair and pulls his head back, the barrel of the gun pressed tight against his temple where he kneels at his feet. Porthos can see the tight line of throat, dark with a fuzz of beard against the pale skin. It might be Athos. It has to be Athos. Fuck.

“Shoot and he dies,” the soldier shouts. “Hertz? Sind Sie noch da?”

“I’m afraid he’s not,” Ninon calls back calmly from where she is crouched out of sight at the front of the car. She pushes slightly at the body so that is slumps sideways and gives her a little room to wiggle between the front wheels.

“Is it him?” d’Artagnan whispers, “Athos?”

“I don’t know. I think so,” Porthos says. “Left or right?” he asks with a quirk of his head towards the road.

“What?”

“Want to take the one on the left, or the right?”

“But the third has a gun to his head!” the boy whispers.

Porthos shifts a little, quietly, and tries to get a better eyeline at the soldiers through the tangle of hedgerow between the road and where they crouch in the ditch. “Leave that one to Aramis.”

D’Artagnan’s eyes are wide in the darkness beside him. Porthos seems him nod tightly.

“Left,” he says.

“Right. Wait for Aramis, then shoot. _Fast._ ”

Porthos knows that Aramis, across the road, is moving to a point where he can get a clean shot at the soldier with a gun to Athos’ head, but still the seconds seem to stretch unbearably, until Porthos’ arms are beginning to shake holding up the weight of his gun trained on the soldier to the right.

 _Make it bloody count, Aramis,_ he thinks.

When the shot comes he has no time to wonder if it’s indeed brought down its target - his finger has squeezed the trigger, the recoil buzzed through his shoulder before he’s had the space for conscious thought. D’Artagnan’s shot is an echo to his, and the three dead men hit the ground almost as one.

There’s a moment of silence before Ninon raises her head above the bonnet of the car, and before Porthos can hiss for her to be careful she’s moving cautiously to the back seat and reaching for the Sten gun hidden there. Porthos and d’Artagnan crawl through the bushes and reach the road just as Aramis emerges from the other side. Ninon motions with a wave of her hand for them to stay back, and sprays the canvas side of the truck with bullets. “No one else in there,” she calls after a moment, and all Porthos can think, with a heavy rush of respect, is _where the hell did d’Artagnan find this one?_

There’s a nervous sort of feeling, like sickness rising in his gut as he nears the man shaking in on himself, head bowed and still kneeling amongst the dead Germans.

“Athos?” Aramis calls uncertainly. “Athos, it’s us.”

Athos doesn’t look up, just slumps a little further into himself, and without realising it Porthos is down on his knees beside him, arms encircling the thin frame of Athos’ shoulders. The man’s breathing quickens, and he tries to flinch against the touch but Porthos holds him tightly.

Aramis is next to him, crossing himself and laughing breathlessly. “Oh God, Athos...Athos...”

Porthos’ heart is drumming a wild tattoo of fear and adrenaline in his chest, and it’s almost enough to drown out the outside world, until the sound of approaching vehicles hums at the back of his mind.

There’s a clatter of footprints as d’Artagnan skids to a halt beside them and plucks at Porthos’ collar. “Come on, come _on!_ ”

Porthos looks up to see that Ninon has already disappeared, and hefts Athos up to his feet as the first shots zip over their heads. The whine of bullets and the ping of impact on the truck and the old Peugeot behind them rise to a cacophony as two military trucks and a jeep pull up, and it’s only when they’re disappearing into the bushes, Athos’ thin frame barely a weight between them, that he first speaks. 

“Roger,” Athos rasps, peering over his shoulder as the road disappears behind them.

*

It’s a twenty minute scramble along hedgerows and one mad dash across an open field before they reach the railway bridge where they’d tethered Serge’s old cart-horse earlier that evening. It takes the combined strength of Porthos and d’Artagnan both to get Athos up onto its back, even with Aramis hefting him up from where he sits atop the horse, but the remainder of the journey passes quicker than on foot, and more silent than by car. Even if they did still have one.

Athos doesn’t react when they whisper his name, tell him _not long now_ and _we’ve got you_ and _it’s alright, Athos._ Even with the circle of Aramis’ arms tight around him he won’t stop shivering, won’t lift his head from where his chin is slumped against his chest.

The cool of night has fallen fully before they reach the old barn they’ve commandeered as a base for the past few weeks. The little firefly speck of Serge’s lit cigarette emerges from the darkness where he’s propped himself to wait against the crumbling stone wall. He limps over as they heave Athos down from the horse, and takes the reins from d’Artagnan with a nod. “There’s clean water and blankets in the barn.”

“Oh,” Serge continues, “And I managed to find these,” he says, dropping two morphine syrettes into Aramis’ palm. He flicks a quick glance at Athos, quaking in Porthos’ arms. “Think you might need ‘em.”

***


	2. Verschärfte Vernehmung

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _He allows himself to think about Anne - is she listening outside the door? Is she here? - but never about Porthos or Aramis. To have them there at the tip of his tongue is too dangerous, to think of them here in this place is to imagine them with him, and is too much, too much, too much._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: there is some severe whump here. We're talking full-blown psychological and physical torture. Nothing _too_ graphic, but please bear in mind.
> 
> Chapter title "Verschärfte Vernehmung" - "Enhanced interrogation".

The sky is a sheet of gray paper when Athos sees her - he will remember that in the weeks to come, over and over again because it seemed so incongruous: she appeared like the only point of colour in a world suddenly turned monochrome, the startling flash of her eyes, the impossible blue of her dress enough to rock him bodily on that sleet-flickered morning.

She appeared like a portent, and he saw it for what it was almost instantly, felt the heavy mantle of his fate settle about his shoulders.

Still, his mind ricocheted between acceptance and the certainty that he had been mistaken, that it wasn’t really his wife he’d seen but some other dark-haired girl in the crowd, because he was tired and not nearly drunk enough and still loved her - Jesus God how he still loved her. Despite all she’d done, despite the fact that she’d been dead in the ground for five years, the depth of his love for her had been tempered by hatred into something hard and glinting, the strata of their life together compressed diamond-hard in his breast. He knows it will never really go away.

Athos doesn’t speak of it to the others, but it’s never very far from his mind, so that when they come for him he’s not particularly surprised. He wonders briefly if Rémy might have betrayed him, since he is arrested in the yard of Rémy's farm, but when they drag the man's broken body out into the mud he knows it’s Anne, it could only ever have been Anne, and thanks God that Aramis and Porthos are the other side of Le Havre and blessedly unknown to her.

Athos is not afraid as he is pushed to his knees to have his hands bound roughly behind his back. There is only an odd sort of heaviness, something like tiredness and acceptance and perhaps, peace.

They leave him naked in a fetid basement cell for three days. There is no window, and the door is solid. The only sound for some time is the dripping of water and the buzzing of the bare lightbulb that never switches off, set too high in the ceiling for him to hope to reach. It only adds to the peculiarly disjointed sensation of being muffled somehow, buried under the earth with all the creeping wriggling things, forgotten.

He feels more alive than he has in a long time - it’s only the rest of the world that he is beginning to fear is dead.

There’s no food or water for those three days, and it's so cold he finds sleep an impossibility. His stomach cramps hard against the hunger, and his tongue bleeds dry and cracked when he attempts to lick what little moisture trickles down the damp stone walls.

When the first sounds filter under the cracks in his door he is honestly surprised, sure now that he, in his windowless cell, must be the last living soul on earth. But the screams suggest otherwise. Sometimes it’s a man, sometimes a woman, for hours upon hours upon hours. Athos had honestly never believed that a person could make such noises.

The sounds weave themselves through the fug of hunger and thirst, the exhaustion in his head and heart and limbs. When the three days is up, a man comes to Athos with soft words and gentle hands in his hair, propping him up, coaxing him to drink. He is given back his clothes and, when it becomes apparent that he is in no fit state to do so himself, he is helped to dress.

Athos expects questions then, or at the very least violence, but neither come. He is given a blanket and then, twice a day, guards bring him a little food and water. 

Otherwise he is left entirely alone.

After perhaps ten days Athos begins to think that if they are in no great hurry to ask questions then he will do the honours himself. He asks the guards - politely enough - where they have taken him and what day it is. He asks for cigarettes and something to read, and after a while, when silence is the only reply, he attempts a more personal approach, asks their names and where they’re from, if they have family.

No answers are ever given - in fact they don’t exchange a word with him or even acknowledge his questions, no matter the language that he poses them in, french or german or english, or when he is particularly bored, latin.

After fifteen days, or perhaps twenty, the man with gentle hands comes back. His name is SS-Hauptsturmführer Meindl. He has two chairs and a table brought in for them to sit at, and asks Athos in french if he has ever heard of _Verschärfte Vernehmung. ___

__“I think we both know that _enhanced interrogation_ is a pretty term for an ugly truth,” Athos replies, in perfect german. He smiles grimly. “We’re both soldiers. We both know violence.”_ _

__SS-Hauptsturmführer Meindl’s soft hands speak otherwise, though. Athos wonders if he has ever held a gun, though he is undoubtedly responsible for more deaths than could be counted, even by a man like Athos, with an empty cell and the barren hours of incarceration to fill._ _

__“There is no need for violence,” the interrogator says, lips curling disdainfully._ _

__“Was there no need with them?” Athos asks with a quirk of his chin._ _

__“You heard that? I am sorry,” Meindl says._ _

__Athos huffs a disdainful breath, not quite a laugh. “I’m sure.”_ _

__Meindl eyes him across the table and begins to ask him questions, soft toned and easy: where do his orders come from, does he know any wireless code sets, who are his contacts, what weapons do they have._ _

__Athos lets the questions break over him like water, and it’s almost a relief after waiting for so long._ _

__He has no rank to give, and his real name is not something that he wishes to speak aloud, though Meindl must know it by now. Instead Athos sits in silence, and makes a game of staring at his interrogator, unblinking for as long as he can._ _

__Meindl repeats the sets of questions three times, before folding his hands in front of him and giving a quiet little sigh._ _

__“So be it,” he says. “How disappointing.”_ _

__Athos is expecting the beatings to follow swiftly behind Meindl’s polite but futile questioning, but he realises only later that it’s all part of the trick. They leave him, for some hours, until he has fallen into one of the fitful and uneasy snatches of sleep that he can manage against the cold stone floor. He wakes to a confusion of blows and kicks, and in the disorientated state between sleep and awake it seems as though there are hundreds of them, swarming over him, striking and stamping with boots and fists._ _

__The next day Meindl lifts him from the floor, and helps him into the chair at the table once more. He asks the same questions, his voice is kind and easy, but Athos can only sit there sagging, and stare, and stare._ _

__This is what his life becomes: a rhythm of days and nights, questions and beatings that follow a pattern until they _don’t_ , and the change is enough to set him reeling like the jarring of bones. He fights back when he can, if only for his own peace of mind - a mind he feels slipping a little further each day, in any case. There’s little he can do: the guards outnumber him, have weapons and the luxury of food and rest to fuel their brutality. Still, it’s the thought that counts, he supposes._ _

__He has no concept of time - sometimes he is brought food, sometimes he is left without for what feels like days. There is no window to see the sun or the moon passing, but he thinks that it must be a week at least before the beatings turn to something more crafted._ _

__Sometimes they hold his head down in a tub of ice water until his world narrows to a pinprick and vanishes, in excruciating increments, into unconsciousness. When he tries to sleep they wake him, keep him walking in circles around the cell until he falls and cannot get up, and no amount of threats or vicious slaps will do a thing to change that._ _

__Sometimes they tie a metal pole to his back so that he cannot sit down, or hang him by his arms until the exhaustion kicks the legs out from underneath him and he will slump, his full weight against his bonds - it’s here that he dislocates his shoulder, though the pain is so intense and so complete that it takes hours for him to realise that this is what has happened. Later, he sits and counts down from five-hundred, summoning all his strength up like a drawn-in breath so that he can yank his arm in one quick burst of energy. He’s not sure if the shoulder is back in the socket, but when he’s conscious once more the pain is a dull, heavy thing, and a little feeling has returned to his fingers._ _

__He allows himself to think about Anne - is she listening outside the door? Is she here? - but never about Porthos or Aramis. To have them there at the tip of his tongue is too dangerous, to think of them here in this place is to imagine them with him, and is too much, too much, too much._ _

__It’s never Meindl that hurts him, but it is always he that makes the pain stop. After perhaps a month and a half Athos begins to watch the door, willing it to open, willing Meindl to step through, to lift him from the floor with his gentle hands. The relief, the sickening rush of gratitude unfurls like a banner inside him when Meindl comes, and Athos begins to both hate and love the man with a fury that startles him._ _

__Cigarette burns and beatings with metal pipes, the ever present threat of electrocution or being forced to drink kerosene, which they hold over his head and pretend they will douse him with while others stand by flicking lit matches at him and laughing. Athos begins to realise there are all sorts of sounds a human being in pain can make, but it comes as some surprise to him that none of them are in the shape of words, or answers._ _

__Athos has never considered himself a particularly brave person - he has simply pushed at the fear until it is something compacted and hard within him, and he can be allowed to act without its influence. But in this place the fear and pain and exhaustion combine like a blue pall of smoke around his head, behind his eyelids - an impossible blue like the sky on a spring day or the deep shadow on snow, the flash of magpie’s wing, bright and keening in his mind. He cannot answer their questions - he can barely remember his own name._ _

__He holds his silence until one day the words dredge up from some fathomless depth within him, and it's a question of his own: are the forget-me-nots in bloom?_ _

__Once it’s uttered the thought consumes him, and it’s all he can think, all he can say. It’s like a tide that’s risen so far only to leave him beached like driftwood, utterly spent and lost. He begs them, over and over, but no one will answer, and at times it only antagonises the guards._ _

__Meindl visits less and less. Athos feels the loss like something raw and flayed within him._ _

__The beatings stop, the guards grow disinterested. Sometimes they remember to feed him._ _

__Athos sits, and stares at the walls until he can see straight through - straight through brickwork and crumbling plaster and out the other side, to green fields filled with wavering blue forget-me-nots._ _

__***_ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All the torture methods mentioned were reportedly used by the Gestapo on captured resistance fighters during WW2. 
> 
> Many of them are still used today.

**Author's Note:**

> So I'd been thinking about this one for a while, and I've no idea why but it just wouldn't go away. 
> 
> Set in Normandy because I was there for the D-Day 70th anniversary this year, and have been to all the places mentioned. The Château d’Évrecy is entirely made up but based on the Château de Bordeaux, with its guillotine, that features in the fantastic book Code Name Verity.
> 
> Where I've been able to make this accurate I have - I don't pretend to be an expert on WW2 or the French resistance, just a cheerful, interested history fan. Please forgive any glaring errors. Oh, and my entirely google-translated German which I tried to verify but may be hilariously wrong. Apologies in advance to any German speakers out there.
> 
> Title is from the fragments of poem read out on Radio Londres as a signal to the resistance that the Allied invasion of Normandy was about to begin.
> 
> Entirely un-beta'd.


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